Fine Art Connoisseur November-December 2016

Méryon was “undoubtedly one of the greatest artists on copper that the world has produced.”— Sir Francis Seymour Haden “The case of Charles Méryon is one of those painful ones which recur in every generation… [he] was sorely tried by public and national indifference, and in a moment of bitter discouragement he destroyed the most magnificent series of his plates.”— P.G. Hamerton…

Depending on when this reaches you, Americans have elected, or are about to elect, a new president. This campaign has been more polarizing than any I’ve seen, and the U.S. media has been unprecedentedly biased and ill-behaved. I’d say we’re all a bit embarrassed for those press organizations — at every point on the political spectrum — that have abandoned their integrity in the hope of fooling audiences into supporting favored candidates. It’s clear many outlets were paid to report stories as though they were fact. And it’s possible that millions were consequently swayed by the journalists they trusted. This constitutes journalistic malpractice. Alas, the art world has its own form of journalistic malpractice. If a dealer promotes a forged artwork as authentic, that is clearly grounds for prosecution, as…

I am glad to report that we got a great response to the October issue’s feature article on the Da Vinci Initiative. As you may recall, this is a non-profit organization working with classroom teachers nationwide to help them master challenging artistic skills they can pass along to their pupils. Once you focus on something, you suddenly start noticing it everywhere you go: since the Da Vinci Initiative article ran, I’ve been hearing about other success stories in this vein. Most recently, I visited the Aperture Foundation, a leading nonprofit dedicated to contemporary photography. That’s not generally “my” kind of art, but I was inspired to discover that Aperture helps students learn how to visually communicate their ideas, construct and defend their interpretations, create photographs with intention and meaning, and…

In the Southwest, when Native Americans beat their drums, it isn’t just to keep time during ceremonial dances. The beating of the taut hide, by hand or stick, helps summon sacred gods and forefathers, acts as medicine during healing ceremonies, signals the start of war, even awakens deities. But no matter how talented the drummer, practice is required, a subject deftly captured in the mid-1920s by Catherine Critcher (1868–1964) in Indian Drummer, which is featured in the Santa Fe Art Auction’s next sale (December 3–4). “The greatest part of this painting is the almost single-minded emphasis on the drummer himself, caught in a very private, isolated moment,” says Adam H. Veil, executive director of the auction firm. “The subject is contemplative, lost in his thoughts, not returning the viewer’s gaze.…

E lie Hirschfeld walks into the living room of his Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking the Metropolitan Museum of Art and begins to examine the framed paintings leaning against his furniture. “Choosing my favorite artwork is like asking me to choose my favorite child — and my wife and I have a lot of kids in our now-blended family,” says Hirschfeld, who, as president of Hirschfeld Properties, is one of New York’s most prolific real estate developers, as well as a Broadway producer and philanthropist whose causes include the Weizmann Institute of Science, Brown University, and the Jewish National Fund. “Choosing was a real challenge.” In the rooms of his expansive home, one finds Georgia O’Keeffe’s drawing/study for her famous Brooklyn Bridge painting, a Marc Chagall scene looking through a Manhattan…

CARL BRETZKE (b. 1954) recently turned a corner in his pursuit of becoming a full-time professional painter: he has put in enough hours at the easel to get his work consistently noticed in the art world, and his recent achievements — including winning the grand prize in the 2016 PleinAir Magazine Salon Competition — are allowing him to conclude his career as an interventional radiologist and devote the rest of his life to art. Bretzke earned an M.D. at the University of Minnesota Medical School, but the undergraduate degree he had received previously at the University of Colorado included a minor in fine art. About midway through a successful medical career, Bretzke felt a strong call to return to art. While maintaining his day job, he spent several years…